The present invention relates to a mounting equipment and mounting method of conductive balls for mounting conductive balls on the electrodes of a plurality of electronic components, for example semiconductor elements, formed on a substrate.
In a process forming a bump, which is an extruded electrode, on an electronic component, conductive balls such as solder balls are mounted on the electrodes of the electronic component. Mounting conductive balls has been processed at a wafer state before the electronic component is cut into pieces, in other words at a state in which a lot of semiconductor elements of electronic components is still formed on a substrate in a lattice arrangement.
In the case in which conductor balls are directly mounted on a wafer, however, there is a following problem in a prior art. That is, a wafer is round and when electronic components of rectangular pieces must be cut out from the round wafer, the cut-out line does not coincide with the periphery of the wafer. Accordingly, near the periphery of the wafer, the cut-out line becomes an irregular stair shape. As a result, when conductive balls are mounted on each electronic component of the wafer, a plurality of electronic components can not be gathered together as a rectangular block with good unity and it has to select either to mount piece by piece or to mount altogether for the entire wafer.
In the case of mounting piece by piece, because a lot of mounting actions must be repeated, the productivity decreases. In the case of mounting altogether, there is a difficulty in reliability to secure the correct mounting. In a prior art, it is difficult to mount balls efficiently and stably when balls are directly mounted on a wafer, as explained above.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is to address this problem and aims to offer a mounting equipment and a mounting method of conductive balls, which can efficiently and stably mount conductive balls on electrodes of a plurality of electronic components formed on a substrate.
A mounting equipment of conductive balls of the present invention is a conductive ball mounting equipment for mounting conductive balls on electrodes of a plurality of electronic components formed on a substrate and comprises:
(a) a suction tool having a suction face covering each divided block of a substrate divided into a plurality of blocks;
(b) a suction part formed on the suction face of the suction tool for sucking conductive balls to the positions corresponding to the electrodes and the arrangement pitch of the electronic components; and
(c) suction limiter for sucking the conductive balls, limiting only to the suction part corresponding to the electronic components in the divided blocks.
The above construction enables conductive balls to be sucked only to the suction part determined by a suction limiter, and to be mounted on a pre-divided block with one action. As a result, balls can be efficiently and stably mounted on a substrate with a specified area where conductive balls are not needed using a single suction tool.
Another conductive ball mounting equipment of the present invention has a following construction.
It is a conductive ball mounting equipment in which conductive balls e vacuum-sucked picked up by a suction tool and mounted on a workpiece. The pick-up head is provided with a fine suction hole blocker for partially and controllably blocking a part of fine suction holes to match with a designated ball-mounting area.
By this construction, efficiency and stability upon mounting conductive balls on a substrate with a designated area for balls not to be mounted can be achieved.
Another conductive ball mounting equipment of the present invention has a construction described below.
It is a conductive ball mounting equipment in which conductive balls are vacuum-sucked, picked up by a pick-up head with a plurality of fine suction holes at the bottom, and mounted on a workpiece. The pick-up head is provided with a blockade plate which is detachably attached at an attachment opening at the side face of the pick-up head for partially blocking a plurality of suction tubes according to the ball mounting area.
According to this construction, conductive balls can be stably mounted on different mounting areas by a single pick-up head.